Playing Fair and Being Kind

Or, how not to stay attached to a nice girlfriend.
I had a hankering for some Leann Rimes music this evening. She is a pure gold talent singer in my humble opinion. Listening to her crooning Patsy Cline transported me to those days I spent driving fast cars and drinking lots of beer in the Southland; Norfolk and Charleston. I am lucky to have survived and later on while on the west coast I repeated much of the same behaviour. I recall keeping a few cases of beer in my garage when I lived near Charleston. I could drink a case on Saturday and taper off on Sunday with the second case. This was in 1968. For the next six years I drank alcoholically and behaved likewise. I drank on the job on land and at sea.
By 1974 I’d sucked down beers and shots of whiskey from Charleston to Sydney, Australia to Guam to Bremerton, Washington to San Diego. I was an international drunk. Not my words. In my mind I was a borderline problem drinker.
Along the way I was able to admit to myself that I needed help. I applied for a duty station that put me in position to be a director of one of the Navy’s Counseling Centers. I got the training and the job and at that point I stopped drinking cold turkey with no outside help. White knuckle.
At this point in time I was stationed in San Diego. By my actions of no longer drinking I was on my highhorse and behaving radically. My emotions were raw and I was troubled as well as trouble. I separated from my wife of fifteen years and lived on the base. I met a young woman close to my own age but younger. Beth was a nice person new to the region of San Diego. Beth had come west from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She and I dated a few times and then we became lovers. I liked her a lot.
After a few years of not drinking I felt o.k. but I still had no program for staying sober. No ‘treatment plan’ in the parlance of counselors. So it was after the second year of this period of false sobriety that I met Beth. She worked as a reporter for a newspaper in Pacific Beach. We each had time to spend freely and we made the most of it. We’d been dating about a month when Beth asked me if I wanted to go to Tecate, Mexico. She needed to work on an assignment for the newspaper. The Pacific Beach newspaper asked her to do a feature article on the Tecate brewery. I was to be her driver and escort.

It was a Saturday and we neglected to consider the place would be closed to visitors. We drove about fifty miles along the border on the U.S. side to get to Tecate. (I owned a ’65 fastback Mustang then. I was so cool. Beth loved the car.) We went through the border crossing and found the brewery easily. When we got to the security check point at the factory we discovered there was no one available to show us around nor to be interviewed by Beth. Bummer. With my best Spanish I found a supervisor to speak with us. He saw Beth and machismo prevailed. He decided he’d spend time showing us the workings of the brewery and the assembly line as well. He also began speaking perfect English at this point. We were lucky.
The first place he took us was to the assembly part of the brewery. We arrived at a large roll up door next to the parking lot. The supervisor raised the huge door by hand and when it rolled up we could see the inside of the building but what I personally saw was an amazing display of beer cases stacked ten or fifteen high. There must have been a hundred cases of beer just inside the door to one side. We entered through the doorway and I couldn’t take my eyes of the stack of beer. My mouth was open I’m sure.
We proceeded directly to an assembly point next to the conveyor belt that carried a steady string of Tecate beer cans along toward the place where the tops of the cans get crimped onto them.
Beth was taking notes while the supervisor was explaining the process. We had stopped so we could observe the cans passing close by and with great athleticism the man snatched one of the cans off the conveyor belt and handed it to Beth. It was quite a wonderful gesture. She smiled gratefully and took a sip. After she did she offered it to me. I shook my head ‘no’ and she held onto it and turned her attention back to the man. Pretty soon she needed to take notes so she again held the beer can out to me. Well, during the intervening few seconds I’d started salivating so I took the beer can. I held it gingerly while I brought up the rear during the tour. After a minute I made sure Beth wasn’t looking and I took sip. The beer was cool but not cold. It tasted good. I took an internal inventory of my guts, sex organs, brain, examined the palms of my hands to see if there was a coat of hair. Nothing bad, all was good. I relaxed and Beth never got the beer back. I bogarted it.
Ahh…the beginnng of the end. Not obvious though. Only in retrospect. After we finished the tour we crawled into the Mustang and I suggested we go to TJ for a quick lunch and maybe a beer. Beth liked the idea so we drove Mexico route 20 to Tijuana and stopped at the Jai Alai Palace to eat.
By now, with a can of Tecate in my belly rushing toward my brain, I was nearly fluent in Spanish and cooly navigating the highway westward toward my “happy destiny”. We arrived at the Palace and took a small table near the doorway. The place was busy with tourists. The waiter listened as I expertly placed our order, in Spanish, for two beers. He brought us four beers. I was aghast. My guilt, which had been buried deep within (I thought) manifested in anger and impatience. I called the waiter back and informed him that I’d ordered TWO beers. He patiently explained that every new customer was allowed a free beer ergo the four beers. I was only slightly relieved. My guilt rose and i knew I was in trouble. Not to fear however. After I drank the first of the two I was guilt free. After the second of the two I was a new man and the new man wanted another two beers. I was aware that Beth was concerned since I was her driver and it was getting late in the afternoon. She suggested we return to the U. S. side of the border and get back to Pacific Beach. I knew of a nice restaurant in PB where we could eat Mexican food and get a beer, or two. Aljones Mexican Restaurant. Here is a quote from a history of PB I found.
“One of the first buildings ever built on Garnet Avenue, a two-story residence dating from 1913, once stood next door to the Backyard, at 860 Garnet. In 1965 it was purchased by Albert Jones and converted into Aljones Mexican Restaurant, which became Diego’s Café y Cantina in 1981 and Pacific Beach Bar & Grill and Tremors dance club in 1994.”

Here is the link if you want to read about PB. It was a terrific place for me.
http://thewebsters.us/2017/05/30/pb-bars-some-history/

Beth and I found Aljones and sat at a booth. I ordered a pitcher of beer at which point she said she didn’t want any. When the beer came I eschewed the accompanying glasses and drank directly out of the pitcher. At this point Beth must have seen flags rising. She asked me if I was going to be all right. I didn’t notice anything wrong so I assured her that I was just fine, thank you. If I was going to not be all right I knew where to go I informed her suggesting that I was a counselor and that I knew where there were AA meetings. What a joke.

That was the last time I saw Beth. After I drove her home and dropped her off, at her suggestion, she stopped seeing me. I was a little disappointed but with my new life ahead I was busy. I drank for nearly two years. It wasn’t pretty but so what, eh? I ended up in AA and I stayed for thirty seven years. Life goes on.
I think of Beth once in a while and I wonder how she’s doing. I hope she found a good guy.

G. M. Goodwin
6 February 2018